Cognitive Development
Chapter 13
Outline
1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
2. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
2. Development of Information-Processing Skills
1. Metacognitive Skills and Memory Development
3. Neurophysiological Changes in Development
1. Increasing Neuronal Complexity
2. Maturation of Central Nervous System Structures
4. Cognitive Development in Adulthood
1. Patterns of Growth and Decline
2. Wisdom and Aging
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
- cognitive development
- The investigation of how mental skills build and change with
increasing physiological maturity (maturation) and experience
(learning)
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• The most comprehensive theory of cognitive
development
• We can learn as much about children’s intellectual
development from examining their incorrect
answers to test items as from examining their
correct answers
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Development occurs in stages that evolve
via equilibration, in which children seek a
balance (equilibrium) between what they
encounter in their environments and
cognitive processes and structures they have
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• Equilibration involves three stages:
– Equilibrium
• Occurs when child’s existing mode of thought and existing
schemas are adequate for confronting and adapting to the
challenges of environment
– Assimilation
• Incorporating new information into the child’s existing
schemas
– Accommodation
• Changing the existing schemas to fit the relevant new
information about the environment
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)
– Involves increases in the number and the
complexity of sensory (input) and motor
(output) abilities during infancy
– 0-9 months – infant cognition seems to focus
only on what the infants immediately can
perceive through their senses
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)
– 9 months and older have a sense of object permanence
• Knowledge that objects continue to exist even when
imperceptible to the infants
– Children begin to show signs of representational
thought
• Child starts to be able to think about people and objects that
are not necessarily perceptible at that moment
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Preoperational Stage (2 to 6-7 years)
– The child begins actively to develop the
internal mental representations that started at
the end of the sensorimotor stage
– Children exhibit centration
• A tendency to focus on only one especially
noticeable aspect of a complicated object or
situation
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Concrete-Operational Stage (7-8 to 11-12)
– Children become able to manipulate mentally
the internal representations that they formed
during the preoperational period
– Conservation of quantity
• The child is able mentally to conserve (keep in
mind) a given quantity despite observing changes in
the appearance of the object or substance
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Formal-Operational Stage (older than 11-12
years)
– Children develop mental operations on
abstractions and symbols that may not have
physical, concrete forms
– Children are finally fully able to take on
perspectives other than their own, even when
they are not working with concrete objects
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Rediscovered in 1970s and 1980s
– Vygotsky emphasized the role of the
environment in children’s intellectual
development
– Internalization
• The absorption of knowledge from context
• The environment determines what the child
internalizes
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Zone of proximal development (ZPD)
– The zone of potential development
– The range of potential between a child’s
observable level of realized ability
(performance) and the child’s underlying latent
capacity (competence), which is not directly
obvious
1. Major Approaches to
Cognitive Development
1. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• Dynamic assessment environment
– The interaction between child and examiner does not
end when the child responds
– In static testing, when a child gives a wrong answer,
the examiner moves on to the next problem
– In dynamic assessment, when the child gives a
wrong answer, the examiner gives the child a graded
sequence of guided hints to facilitate problem
solving
Cognitive Development in
Adulthood
• Fluid intelligence
– The cognitive-processing skills that enable us to
manipulate abstract symbols, as in mathematics
• Crystallized intelligence
– Our stored knowledge, which is largely declarative,
such as vocabulary, but also may be procedural, such as
the expertise of a master chess player
• Although crystallized intelligence is higher, on
average, for older adults than for younger adults,
fluid intelligence is higher, on average, for young
(20s, 30s, 40s) adults than for older ones